Started in 2007 as a reflection on local life in and around Lenton Recreation Ground, a small inner-city park in Nottingham, from the perspective of a local resident whose home overlooks the park. Now as much about life in the city and other things more personal.

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Monday, 31 March 2014

Over the years I have taken a good few photographs of the Lenton Flats. By the end of 2014 all five tower block will be gone. Here are a few:

Notice the test drill holes. They revealed corrosion in the steel wire embedded in the concrete panels which clad the flats. Each panel hanging from the interior steel frame. There weight and mass helped to keep the tower block rigid. It marked the end and it became only a matter of time...

Saturday, 15 March 2014

Today, between house viewers, I took a couple of hours out to do a little exploring in preparation for my 35 history bus tour on 24 May. The map below shows where my sortie took me, plus, not shown on the map, a short hop on a 35 from Wigman Road to Bracebridge Drive shops at the southern end of Bilborough.

It was a perfect early Spring afternoon for walking. Blue skies and a fresh wind reminding me that Winter had not quite yet given up its hold.

The photograph below is taken from the Picture the Past collections of Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire councils and shows Broxtowe Hall, demolished in the 1930s so that a council housing estate could be built on the land it once occupied.

Its demolition made way for something nobler, grander; these were Labour's aspirations to improve the lives of the working class and they did. This quote from Broxtowe Boy by Derrick Butress, published in 2004, page 7, says it far better than I can:

In the early spring of 1939 (75 years ago)... we joined the exodus of families, most of them from the old slum areas, to the new estates west of the city. Nottingham had an admirable record of slum clearance and re-housing from 1919 until well into the 20th century. (The) Broxtowe Estate was an expression of that pioneering energy. It was built of ugly red brick, but designed with good intent, plotted and planned for a new way of life.

(Derrick Buttress was born in 1932 in nearby Hyson Green, on the northern edge of Nottingham City Centre).

Two road signs look across towards one another at the entrance to Broxtowe Hall Close, off Broxtowe Lane.

From Broxtowe Lane, you can catch a glimpse of this wall, a remnant of the long gone Broxtowe Hall estate, remembered in the name of a cul-de-sac. It looks very impressive. I will use its location to track down a plan of the estate, so that I can place the wall in some kind of context.

Just around the corner, on Broxtowe Lane, is a small parade of shops. This is one them. Opened in 1958 and still going strong. On my visit I met Ted Clements and his colleague Jason Yates, who grew up in Broxtowe Hall Close and was able to confirm that the wall was part of the pre-war Broxtowe Hall estate.

The council housing built along Broxtowe Lane during the 1930s came in a variety of styles and arrangements, punctuated every so often with lovely looking houses like these, in the 'arts and crafts' style. Others, as below, are arranged in crescents, set back from the road. When I go back I will take a photograph of the City Council sign which says 'No ball game allowed'. Even the most enlightened council can be guilty of what I have long known as 'municipal fascism'. Local historian Chris Matthews, who is working with TravelRight, talks of the estates as being part of the 'Garden City' movement and I agree.

My next sortie will be spending best part of a day walking the length of Wollaton Vale in search of the Nottingham Canal and how the road reflects changing attitudes to housing during a large part of the 20th century. Its post-war council housing alludes to what happened before the 1939–45 war, but never does it reach the heights of this crescent on Broxtowe Lane.

I came across several small parades of shops like this one on Broxtowe Lane and the parade below, only a few hundred yards away, at the junction of Broxtowe Lane and Strelley Road.

Most are occupied. No Costa Coffee or Subways here, though I did see a Greggs on Bracebridge Drive. To the right of this photograph there are some closed up Co-op shops and the left is a Co-op 'superstore'. There are Co-op shops the length of this short walk. They are a topic in themselves. Something for another day.

Being a Saturday afternoon, it may be that this small hairdresser and beauty parlour was closed anyway. I hope so. I like the pink butterflies in the panels and imagine the enthusiasm and enterprise of the person responsible.

A number of Broxtowe bus stops display very large route numbers, like this at the Moor Road stop on Strelley Road. I have never seem bigger.

Opposite the bus stop, at the junction of Strelley Road, is the sign, pointing to (Bilborough) parish church. To the right a King George post box. It hints at what is to come, something quite unexpected and, I am ashamed to say, unnoticed by me until I came this way on a 35 in January. Thirty years a 35 passenger, albeit occasionally, and there is this...

... delightful Nottingham City Council community centre, known as the Sheila Russell Centre.

To one side, the Centre has its own secluded garden. A rare delight.

A little further on, past some cottages and through a gate, I entered the churchyard of Bilborough's St Martin's Church, It has a modern extension of some artistic importance, but more about that when I have had the opportunity to see inside. For now, enjoy this view of a church at the heart of the original pre-conquest Bilborough. A reminder that people have lived and worked here for a thousand years at least.

Turn around and you look across open playing fields, offering a panoramic view of Nottingham, with tower blocks gleaming in the sunlight. A million miles away or so it seemed for a few brief minutes, then it was off to catch a 35 to Bracebridge Drive shops and to look at a view I have always remembered from travelling on a 35, especially upstairs on a double-decker and why it has long been my candidate for the title of Nottingham's 'Heritage Bus Route'.

As I have said already, the Co-op is everywhere on the Broxtowe, Strelley and Bilborough estates and, by chance, the 1954 Nottingham street map I found included the advert below for the shopping parade above. Windows now boarded up, shutters down, this Co-op parade of shops is a pale imitation of what the 1954 advert promises.

Then I caught sight of this. Yet another small, independent, hardware shop on the 35 route and, standing in the shop talking to its owner, who told me it opened in 1950, I realised what my 35 History Bus Day on 24 May will be about. If you take the time to stop and talk to the folk who live, work and shop along the route of the 35, you experience Nottingham in all its glory, made as much, if not more, by those who live in the shadow of a 'citycentric' City Council who wield the power.

By chance more than design, this photograph of Wollaton Hall was the first one I took today, from my seat on the 35 bus taking me onto Broxtowe Lane. The 'Bracebridge Drive Shops' bus stop sits across the road's T-junction with Graylands Road and, as my bus idled away a few minutes, I had the opportunty to take this photograph.

What I have written above about ordinary folk and those who 'wield the power' is a timeless story and is one 16th century Bilborough folk would recognise and understand. Then it was the rich families who owned the land and built the likes of Wollaton and Broxtowe Halls who were in charge.

This will be my story on 24 May as we travel on the top deck of our 35 from Bulwell to Nottingham City Centre. Quite how I will tell it, is still in the making. Right now I just hope you will enjoy my photographs and this blog.

Friday, 14 March 2014

First, news today of Tony Benn's passing has filled the media with comment and reminiscences. Those of us lucky enough to have enjoyed his company for just a few minutes have always treasured our memories. We met him on a couple of occasions wearing our Labour Arts & Museums Association (LAMA) hats in the 1970s and 80s. Caroline Benn was one of our supporters. He was always attentive, charming and encouraging. Perhaps more memorable was when he stood on Lenton Boulevard addressing the crowd which gathered around him during the 1992 General Election campaign, when Alan Simpson was elected as our MP. The above photograph is one of a number taken by Susan and is taken from a sheet of contact prints (hence the size). I think this is how I will remember him.

My own wrestlings with mortality seem of little consequence, but I am counting the days to my 70th birthday and I am aware of the direction I want my life to take, but the way ahead remains littered with diversions, mostly of my own making. This does not make me unhappy. Quite the contrary. I feel blessed that I have the energy and enthusiasm. Long may it last.

Trying to sell our house is very much part of where we want to go and the process is made all the more difficult by Nottingham City Council's new planning ban on any more student houses in Lenton, where we live, and other parts of the city. Once again the winners are the landlords and the losers owner occupiers. My next blog will be devoted to what is happening and why the restrictions of Houses in Multiple Occupation is already working in unexpected ways, so watch this space!

Right now, I am working on my new www.historybybus.org.uk website and my 35 'History Bus' day on 24 May, plus preparing for a Lenton local history 'housing' walk with members of West Bridgford Local History Society, and doing some creative writing. Then there are the daily chores. I suspect that everyone reading this lives the same way, except some of you have to work for a living as well.

Finally, just in case you haven't seen it, I am attaching a copy my Nottingham History by Bus Map, part of a work in progress. My direction has been in front of me for years, I love local history and travelling on buses. I have brought them together occasionally in the past and I am amazed that no one else has attempted to do what I am doing on a regular basis. We shall see, but this, along with writing short stories is what I want to do, plus play bowls and grow runner beans in the summer. Then there is loving Susan, still 24 in my eyes and, with her, I feel 24 as well. There will be diversions, most I know will be of my own making, but that's the me I've been living with for nearly seventy years and I am happy with that insomuch as it doesn't keep me awake at night.